Kibbuttzes and thee like are fine for local issues. Most environmentalists are socialist in my experience.
Next step for mankind is find a few more planets to live on, we've been very slow in this area and really not pushed on since the 60s but its blatantly obvious the one we're sitting on can't sustain an ever increasing population beyond this millenium. Look how far we went from year 1000 to 2000AD, can we move on as a race by the same amount by 3000? I personally would like to live on a planet free from communists and fascists with tons of fresh air, tons of beautiful scenary, tons of food and drink, tons of beautiful women and of course Watford FC entertaining me with a victory 52 Saturdays a year.... Utopia...
The question is did Socialists become environmentalists or was it the other way around ? If the answer is that they were environmentalists first then why did they become socialists ? The answer to that could be that they believe that a centrally planned economy is the best placed to tackle the environmental problems of today and the future. The 'Free Market' or the doctrine of Neo Liberalism has no inbuilt answers to these problems - no concept that there is a natural restriction to growth (as there is in everything else) or that the World does not belong to us exclusively as a species. Maybe this drives them to some forms of socialism. Also, the 'local' and the 'global' are intertwined themes - when the only shops left in my town are 'Out of town supermarkets' is this a local theme or a global one ? Both I would suggest; and a result of towns not protecting themselves in the past. At any rate as a consumer I have even less choice here than under socialism. Unrestricted growth leads to monopoly which in turn leads to less choice and not more as free marketeers would claim. This monopoly stage of Capitalism is not just a threat to free choice, but also to democracy itself when firms have become so big that their turnover is larger than the G.D.P. of the Countries where they are located - Denmark and Maersk Shipping being an obvious example. I am asking here for concepts such as maximum growth, maximum size and maximum wealth - does that make me a Socialist ? I am not argueing for some return to romantic self contained small communities full of people wearing bearskins - but rather stressing that towns of the future will be required to develop a certain resilience against global fluctuations whether those are of financial origins or to do with resources. Is it not ridiculous for example that a rural town should become completely dependent for its foodstuff upon a globalized system of mono agriculture based on fossil fuels for its distribution, when we know that the oil will run out one day ?
